Peer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 27 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Peer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- ILIsrael≈1 in 22Kfew records
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 33Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 301 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
3,736 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Peer is found
(measured from records)Peer counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 3,736 | 1 in 89K | 3.8K | Peer | 301 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Peer | 21 |
| AT Austria | #431 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 15 | Peer | 75 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Peer | 36 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 78K | 333 | Peer | 91 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Peer | 67 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 253 | 1 in 33K | 253 | Peer | 26 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 56 | 1 in 38K | 56 | — | 1 |
3,736 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Peer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Zugehörige Schreibvariante; Familienname zu Rufname Bernhard. Bearer count: 164 Tokens in Süddeutschland und Westmitteldeutschland; 1005 Telef. in Österreich.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, männl. Vom., niederländische, norwegi sche und dänische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In English, Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In enm, alternative form of pere (“peer”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, a pear, a fruit of the pear tree
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Beverly Peerb. 1912USAmerican musician
- Leta Peerb. 1964CHSwiss artist (1964-2012)
- Oliver Peerb. 2003CACanadian ice hockey player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)56 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 27 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Peer?
- In the etymology graph, Petri, Pero and Petre are forms of the same name in other languages; Pelle is a recorded short or pet form.
- What does the name Peer mean, and where does it come from?
- To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Peer?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.7 thousand people named Peer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled peer. After it come Pakistan, Austria, South Africa and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Peer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,736 people named Peer in 2010, about 1 in 89 thousand residents.
- How common is Peer compared with other names?
- In Austria, Peer is the 431st most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Peer?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/peerThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Peer” — the 431st most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.